Kavanaugh Killed Our Practice: What Survivors Need from Meditation Teachers
A friend asked me how meditation practice was going in the wake of the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearings.
"Terribly," I answered.
I could have easily landed in a pool of shame about that. But I continued, "And that makes complete sense because silent sitting breath-focused meditation practice has always been terrible for me *because* of my history of sexual trauma."
Silence is a terrible idea when I need to speak up to tell my truths.
Sitting still won't work when I'm ready to shake off my freeze response and fight back.
Breath-focused is not a beginner's practice when that’s a part of the body that brings back the most memories of terror.
When my understanding of “meditation practice” is so narrow, I have little access to practice — at a time I need connection to the tranquility, joy, investigatory powers, and equanimity that dharma can bring.
As I look across Buddhist traditions for a wider picture of practice, I'm immediately pained by the sight of major US Buddhist communities like Shambhala and Against the Stream falling apart from the sexual violence of their leaders. I feel how it undermines my trust in Buddhist teachers right now to create spaces safe from sexual violence, or in support of survivors.
A part of me doesn't trust Buddhist practice at all right now.
And yet as someone who takes refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha -- a much larger tradition than any one community or teacher -- I have found great liberation and healing there, as a survivor of sexual violence. It's not all fucked. And as someone who teaches meditation and dharma myself, I know there are trauma-informed approaches for teaching mindfulness and other Buddhist practices.
In our commitments to the Buddha's Third Precept, to not harm others with sexual energy, may we also be committed to creating dharma spaces and teachings where people are not re-traumatized by the sexual harms they've experienced.
Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I vow to cultivate responsibility and learn ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families and society. I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without love and a long-term commitment. To preserve the happiness of myself and others, I am determined to respect my commitments and the commitments of others. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct.
—Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh's take on the Third Ethical Precept
I asked survivors in my life, "What do you need from meditation teachers to offer better support this week" post-Kavanaugh nomination hearings?
A huge thank you to friends who responded and helped shape the crowd-sourced offerings in this list!
1. Offer options for practice
There is no magic meditation to offer that works for all survivors. We have distinct experiences of harm and different needs for healing.
What we share in common is a need to regain agency and decision-making over our bodies. Sexual violation disrupts our sense that we have control over our bodies. Offering *options* for meditation practice is an active way to support survivors to regain autonomy and re-establish a sense of control over our bodies.
Here's an example of how I offer meditation options when teaching at East Bay Meditation Center, a mostly Vipassana-based meditation practice with some of the choices informed by Zen teachings I've been exposed to:
- How to make choices for practice: "I'll offer you a series of choices about how to practice. It's helpful to choose one for this period. When practice gets a little uncomfortable or boring, that's the point in which you try to stick with it and get curious. However if it's feeling traumatic or physically painful in a way that's causing harm, you should move or change what you are doing."
- Posture: "You have the choice of sitting on a chair or cushion, lying down, or standing. Any posture works that supports you being both relaxed and alert."
- Eyes: "You can choose to have your eyes open or closed. If you want your eyes open, your vision could hold the full 180-degree field or be more soft and downcast."
- Focus of Concentration: "Pick a sensation that you can settle your attention on. It could be a body sensation, like how your body comes into contact with the floor, or the feeling of breath in your belly. You could also notice the coming and going of sound."
Avoid body scans while people are extra sensitive from the national news. Tracking the full body in the room means you'll hit every survivor's body landmines. Instead, offer people choices for where to focus their attention.
2. Ask for consent
As part of supporting survivor agency, ask for consent before touching: "Would you like a hug?" or "Would it be okay if I touch your shoulders to help you sit more upright?" Slow down and wait for a "yes" or "no" response before moving in! This gives a survivor time to be surprised by your question, think about how they really feel, evaluate that you are a person they can say "no" to and not be shamed, and then deliver their honest response.
And in reality, survivors are conditioned to struggle saying no, especially to people in power. So even if people say yes, notice if it doesn't feel like an enthusiastic yes.
When I'm not sure, I might respond, "I'm practicing slowing down for enthusiastic consent, and I feel unsure if you are 100% in for this. I want you to know that it's okay to say no to me -- it helps me feel in appropriate balance in this community to know that people can confidently say no." I would then wait for the other person to explicitly ask for or initiate touch, especially if I am in a teaching or leadership role.
3. Broaden ideas for practice
Meditation practice can be so much more than silently sitting and focusing on the breath. What kinds of options exist for practice? As my teacher Mushim Ikeda often reminds me, there are SO MANY! This week can be an opportunity to explore the diversity of practice available within specific Buddhist traditions, or across Buddhist traditions.
- Movement practices: Mahasati movement practice by Thai teacher Luangpor Teean Cittasubho, Tai Ji with Zen teacher Norma Wang
- Chanting: Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with SGI, Three Refuges in Pali, Om Mani Padme Hum from Tibetan traditions
- Other collective sound making: Some survivors are hungry for places to scream and cry together. If your community is a good space for people to express a wide range of big feelings without shame, you might consider opening up room for people to do this. As Rebecca Solnit invited to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, "you are a welcome earthquake."
- Mindful of diverse sensations: In addition to mindfulness of breath and body sensation, mindfulness can be applied to sound, taste, smell, sight. Choice is important here, as any of these areas of the body could trigger traumatic memories for survivors. But understanding my options is extremely helpful, so that if mindfulness of breath doesn't work for me, I know how to focus on sound.
As you offer options, consider the diversity of body minds who will be in the room with you. How will your movement be accessible for someone in a wheelchair or who needs to remain seated? How will someone forced to diet as a child relate to an eating practice? Will some people need ear plugs or an alternate space for quiet if you engage in louder sounds than normal?
Curious to get more training on how to skillfully offer options to diverse body minds? Our friends with Access Centered Movement have developed some specialized trainings for meditation teachers — we’re extremely grateful for their teachings!
4. Reaffirm our basic goodness, tenderly
I really appreciated a friend's specific request from meditation teachers for "reaffirming my basic goodness/Buddha nature, to better tolerate the rage and grief." This feels so important, while also treading into tender territory.
- Metta or lovingkindness practices toward self and others: It's important to take care that there are a lot of landmines for survivors in talking about family members, teachers, mentors, or difficult people. So much sexual violence includes the betrayal of close loved ones. Offer a lot of choice about who to offer metta to, including options for nature and animals, who may offer safer love than people.
- Gratitude toward healers and supporters: Gratitude practice can direct our attention to the people and places and experiences that have supported our healing. (Even the unwitting ones). You'll want to make space that some people may feel lonely and isolated in their healing process, and support gratitude for ourselves as #1 supporters of our own healing journeys.
- Accepting our choices for survival: Survivors blame ourselves for the choices we made that "caused" the violence. We were scared our attacker was going to kill us, so we went along with what they demanded. We had too much to drink. Our self-blame is an attempt to regain control over the situation -- if it was our fault, then we could keep something like this from happening again. Dharma teachings for letting go and non-attachment can be useful for survivors to help accept that there was nothing we could have done better or differently in order to survive.
Avoid forgiveness this week. It's a landmine to even say the word with so much tension on a national level.
5. Inoculate communities to resist violence
As dharma communities want to strengthen their allyship with survivors, not just this week but beyond, it will be key to understand privilege and oppression, and the possibilities for transformation.
This meme comes from an exercise that anti-sexual violence educator Jackson Katz uses in workshops. He asks:
"What steps do you take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted?"
The picture shows two columns, one for men and one for women. The women's column has a seemingly endless list of precautions such as "Hold my keys as a potential weapon" and "Vary my route home from work" and "Never rent first floor apartments." The men's column has one entry: "Nothing. I don't think about it."
While Katz' exercise focuses on the differences in the daily practices men and women take to keep themselves safe, this exercise could also include genderqueer, trans men, and nonbinary people who also take extreme measures daily to stay safe from sexual violence.
This list of daily practices also shows how much we're bought into the myth of sexual violence being strangers raping women. To keep ourselves safe, we protect ourselves from strangers in parking lots, bars, parks, and streets. At its racist extreme, this is the myth of strange Black men raping white women, Emmett Till supposedly whistling at (and wanting more from) Carolyn Donham. This delusion about sexual violence effectively controls the public activity of Black men and white women, and is used to justify physical violence and murder of Black men. It does nothing to protect white women from the sexual violence of our primary abusers -- the white men we know in our families and communities.
If not this, what does real prevention and transformation of sexual violence look like?
Community Practices to Prevent Violence
- Establish a Culture of Consent: As described above, our communities can be important places for practicing enthusiastic consent. As teachers, we hold the greatest power in the room to set the tone and culture.
- Speak Out Against Sexual Violence in All Its Forms: When you hear stories about sexual violence, speak out about how you believe the victim. Call out tendencies to blame the victim for the violence, and reframe sexual violence as the responsibility of the perpetrator.
- Support Survivors and Targeted Communities to Speak Out for Themselves: We're feeling the tenderness of this public letter written by three 15-year-old girls, the same age Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was when she was attacked by Evan Kavanaugh. Special shout out that these youth did not act alone, but were supported and mentored by people in a spiritually-rooted community grounded in the Rinzai Zen lineage, influenced by Norma Wong Roshi.
- Stop Perpetrators: If someone discloses they have been abusive, tell them to stop and encourage them to get professional help. Educate yourself and others about how perpetrators operate – through selecting people based on vulnerabilities, laying on the charm, testing boundaries, and using just enough force to get what they want.
- Dismantle All Forms of Oppression: Perpetrators know how to use situations of unequal power to harm people. To end sexual violence, we must work at this level of causes and conditions. Join with larger movements for justice that are blocking harm and building alternatives that care for all people, rather than a select few.
Ready for Action? Join Black Fridays: #WeDoNotConsent
Join this national call to action:
"To all who are grieving for themselves and this country, who are in pain and feeling the deep effects of this toxic culture—some for the first time, and others, as they have for their entire lifetimes--you are not alone.
We, the undersigned, are an intersectional group of womxn* from every cross section of society who have come together in sacred rage and with a call to ACT.
Starting this Friday [October 5th] and continuing weekly through November 23rd, we are calling on womxn to wear black, rise up, and put a halt to ‘business as usual.’
On #BlackFridays, we will disrupt the many places that give us the Kavanaughs, the Trumps, and the CEOs who harm us. We will enter epicenters of white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, and rape culture, and we will shut them down."
Read more of the powerful, intersectional call to action (with a broad definition of gender), sign on to be part of this movement, and join a local walk-out event this Friday or a future one.
Survivors, take good care <3
Survivors, take good care of yourselves and each other. There is a lot of healing in choosing to take a break from dharma and meditation practices that aren't working for you.
I trust that you know best what you need. I celebrate with you when you get what you need.
May these offerings to dharma and meditation teachers open up a conversation where we all have more opportunity to get our needs met for spiritual and meditation practice. <3
More Resources
Connect to a local sexual assault center
In the US: Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network
In Canada: Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness by David Treleaven
David has written the book for mindfulness teachers who want to understand more about trauma and how to teach in a trauma-sensitive way. I’m still reading it, but from conversations with David while he was writing the book and from my reading so far — it’s an incredible resource.
Incite! Feminists of color against violence
Their books Color of Violence and Conquest! Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide are key texts in understanding sexual violence in broader political terms.